Life Is A Struggle

You wake up in the dead of night,
Crying, shaking, and in a fright,
You don't know what's going on,
All because your so gone,
The nightmares and scares,
You don't know how to handle,
As your light flickers on and off just like a candle,
You struggle with your fears all day and night,
The voices in your head you just want to fight,
Fight them off make them hurt like you do,
The pain just makes you go to the phew,
You have all the faith to fight off the pain,
Instead all it does is mentally drain,
Now your all grown up with unresolved problems,
Each and everyday trying to fight for another.

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Editor’s Note

The number one question our editors receive is—what do the editors and judges look for when judging the contest? The number one answer we give is creativity. Unlike prose, writing composed in everyday language, poetry is considered a creative art and requires a different type of effort and a certain level of depth. Of the thousands of poems entered in each contest, the ones that catch our judges’ eyes are the ones that remove us, even just slightly, from the scope of everyday life by using language that is interesting, specific, vivid, obscure, compelling, figurative, and so on. Oftentimes, poems are pulled aside for a second look based simply on certain words that intrigued the reader. So first and foremost, be sure your poetry is written using creative language. Take general ideas and make them personal. In his infamous book De/Compositions: 101 Good Poems Gone Wrong, W. D. Snodgrass imparts, “We cannot honestly discuss or represent our lives, any more than our poems, without using ideational language.”